


stormy seas, safe harbor

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ADWD spoilers, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst with a Happy Ending, Families of Choice, Father Figures, Gen, I mean eventually, I mean when describing this to someone, I obviously don't know how to tag this properly, I said it's basically medieval foster care ten years too late, Past Abuse, Past Torture, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wishful Thinking, also davos is the embodiment of awesome, every adwd!theon warning applies, make of that what you will, not any news right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:59:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>where the last thing Davos had thought was that he'd end up in charge of his king's prisoner, Theon is sure that being someone's hostage all over again won't be that different from the first time and neither of them really thought it would actually work out until it does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stormy seas, safe harbor

**Author's Note:**

> Or, this is my other theonweek contribution.
> 
> So: I've been wanting to write this damned fic for... probably too much time. Mostly because sometime after finishing ADWD I decided that those two should totally meet and it would only mean good things. The first part of it was actually an answer to a prompt [thrumugnyr](http://thrumugnyr.tumblr.com/) left me on tumblr once (it was for post!ADWD Theon having a bath with someone there and since I had done it to hell and back with the obvious choices I figured I'd go for the unconventional one and pick Davos because I ALWAYS THOUGHT THEY SHOULD MEET), so sorry if you've read that already back when I posted it originally. Hey, there's more to it! Anyway, since it was done and it was a start I figured that I should give in and just write the damn thing and have it out of my system instead of sneaking the basic sentiment in every AU I wrote. Clearly I had started it but then I had graduation/thesis writing so I thought 'hey I can finish it for theonweek by then I'll be done'. I am in fact done, but this thing spiraled away from me and the deadline is tomorrow and I wasn't ever gonna finish in time so I figured I'd post part one now and the rest sometime in January. Sorry about that but this covers probably one third of what I had in mind and it was getting way too long.
> 
> Aaand really this is just wishful thinking. If canon ever goes anywhere like this I'll probably cry in happiness/surprise for months - also clearly no one in here belongs to me if it wasn't overtly clear already. The title is all thanks to my poor friend [fishcollective](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fishcollective/works) who doesn't even read the books and came up with it based on my admittedly ridiculous description.

In the list of strange orders his king gave him, Davos thinks, this has to be the strangest yet. All things considered.

“Your Grace, I’m sorry? Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all,” Stannis sighs, looking absolutely not pleased with the situation.

“Very well. But – why are you asking me?”

Stannis shrugs. “That girl they tried to pass for Arya Stark couldn’t convince him. His own sister can’t convince him. And I can’t stand the guards always showing up here looking ashamed and complaining about _stench_ – you would think they’d have more stomach, as it is. I have no clue of what’s going through Greyjoy’s head and I’m not sure I want to know that either, but maybe if someone he doesn’t know tries to drill into his head that he could take a bath for everyone’s peace of mind it might work yet. And you’re as good as any.”

Davos is sure that it’s not the entire truth, but fine – it’s not anything life-risking, at least.

“All right. Can I see either his sister or the girl, first?”

“Suit yourself. Ask the guards, they’ll bring you to their rooms.”

He goes to see the girl first. She’s pretty, he thinks, regardless of losing a small piece of her nose due to frostbite, though she looks miserable – he’d guess why, from what he knows.

“Jeyne Poole, I suppose?”

She looks at him as if she’s surprised that he’d have bothered to ask her name. “Yes. My lord. Is there something I can do for you?”

“You can tell me a couple of things about how you fared at Winterfell,” he says, figuring that he’s never going to manage this if he doesn’t know why the lad is so set on avoiding water at all costs.

She answers every question and when he’s done he feels mildly sick. He thinks he has a clue of what the problem might be.

He thanks the girl and moves to Asha Greyjoy’s room – rather than miserable, she merely looks annoyed. And somewhat frustrated. She confirms what she could confirm of Jeyne’s story.

“Good luck with that,” she finally says when Davos tells her what he’s been told to do exactly. “I can’t even think about the two times I tried.”

“Is it that bad?”

“As things are right now, Ramsay Bolton should hope that he dies before he ever meets me. But maybe someone who doesn’t know him really might work. At this point, I don’t even know what to think.”

“Right. Wait, you’re older than him, aren’t you?”

“Four years,” she confirms. “Nothing that you’d imagine, if you saw us right now.”

 _Now that was disturbing_ , Davos thinks as he leaves her room. And now he has to think this through, because if he has to do this, he has to be somewhat prepared. He asks around and finds out that the best option for a thorough bathing around Winterfell are the hot pools in the godswood – not exactly good news, since it means actually getting out of the castle and into the woods, and it’s cold outside. Then again, better than nothing. He also asks a maid to find him some clean clothes, soap and towels to have ready in case he succeeds – no point in having them brought later. When the maid hands him a small pack with everything he asked for, Davos figures it’s time to give it a try.

And fine, maybe until he actually was outside the door where they keep Greyjoy he had been thinking that it was a total fool’s errand to send _him_ , and anyway how bad could that problem be. Then a wave of rotten smell hits him when he’s just outside the door and – all right. It is that bad.

He looks at the only guard standing outside. “The king sent me to talk to him.”

“Good luck with that,” the guard replies, sounding disgusted, and then they open the door for him.

When he walks inside, Davos momentarily feels like retching – the stench is so strong that he can’t even pinpoint what exactly is behind it. He can imagine a few reasons, but he’d rather not think about it in detail and settles for breathing through his nose and trying not to let any reaction show on his face.

This until he actually assesses the situation – the bed is empty, and when he actually realizes where Greyjoy actually is, he figures that this is going to be harder than he thought, since he hadn’t expected to find him fitfully sleeping on the ground, pressed against the corner with his face on the wall’s side.

He also sees his sister’s point – if he’s younger than her, he definitely does not look like it.

He doesn’t even know how he’s going to wake him up when he clears his throat just because, and then – well. The sound is apparently enough to solve half of his problems – a moment after the lad wakes up at once, turning on his side as if ready to flee, but that goes away after a moment. He sighs and sits up, looking up at him, still sitting up against the wall. And gods, if he thought that what he heard about Bolton’s bastard in White Harbor was an exaggeration, now he’s re-thinking it – actually, this is a lot worse than he had imagined.

“M’lord,” Greyjoy says, and Davos feels horrified when he sees that he has at least a couple of teeth missing.

“Er. No need to be that formal,” Davos blurts out, feeling completely inadequate. “Theon Greyjoy, or did they bring me to the wrong room?”

“No,” he says, looking down at the ground. “How – how may I be of service?”

“You don’t even want to know who I am?” Davos asks, feeling curious. That wasn’t what he had expected he’d ask first.

“Does it matter?”

He sounds tired, Davos thinks. And now that he looks at his gloves more closely, he can see that he doesn’t have two fingers on the left hand – he tries not to shudder visibly before sitting down on the bed.

“Maybe it doesn’t, but still. I’m Davos Seaworth.”

“You’re – you’re his Hand? And you’re telling me _not to be formal_?” For a moment he looks incredulous before he obviously bites down on his tongue and looks down at the ground. “I’m sorry,” he says, sounding way beyond miserable and as if he’s expecting Davos to do something that he won’t like.

“What for? I still don’t know how he even decided that I should be a lord, lad, let alone his Hand. Don’t sweat it. And if you’re wondering why I’m here… well, apparently the king is relenting to your guards’ protests.”

“What would they protest about? I’m not going to escape.”

 _I can see that_ , Davos thinks. “No, but you don’t smell like roses.”

Theon visibly shudders at that, hard enough that he almost bangs his head throwing it back against the wall, and brings his knees closer to his chest.

“No,” he refuses without even needing an explanation.

“Fair enough, but since I’m supposed to put an effort into convincing you, humor me. Why?”

“I have my reasons,” he replies weakly.

“I don’t doubt that, but that’s not going to work as far as they’re concerned.”

“I won’t try to escape,” he says weakly. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Just humor me and say it.”

“I can’t.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because I’m in no hurry to lose my head the moment your king knows. M’lord.”

The problem, Davos thinks, it’s that it didn’t sound at all sarcastic.

“What if I don’t tell him?”

“You have to. You’re the Hand.”

“That means exactly nothing. I don’t follow orders blindly and if I see that you have a good reason, I’ll see to it.”

Theon looks at him for a moment, then shrugs and looks down at his hands.

“Where’s Bolton?” He visibly shudders again as he says that name.

“I suppose you mean the son? In the dungeons. Why?”

“Then your king is an idiot. He should have taken his head the moment he conquered the castle. He’s not – he will find a way out. And when he does – when he does, I –” He stops, then shakes his head, his gloved left hand closing into a pitiful fist. “The last time I tried to wash myself with water I was supposed to drink, he tore off one of my nails, then skinned the finger, and then he cut it off after I had to beg him to do that. I’m not – I’m _not_.”

He’s resolutely not looking at Davos, and the body language screams that he’s bracing for something he won’t like.

As it is, Davos is trying not to vomit, because – well, he can’t deny that it’s a perfectly valid point. From Theon’s side, anyway.

“Stop that.”

“What?”

“Looking as if you think I’m going to have your head for it. I get it.”

“You – you _what_?”

“I get it. I mean, that seems like a pretty sound reason to me. That said, could you hear me out, at least?”

Theon gives him a tentative nod and Davos hopes that this is going to sound the way he hopes it sounds.

“Bolton’s being executed tomorrow, I think. Or the day after, and from what I know he’s in no position to escape since they bring him food once each day and then leave. And even if he was, he’d probably run into your sister before getting to you, and from what I saw I’m pretty sure he’d never get out of it alive. And – you know, the more you wait the more you risk getting an infection.”

“Not a great loss if I do,” Theon shrugs again, and – all right. Davos thinks that he’s starting to see his sister’s point. It hasn’t even been half an hour and _he_ ’d probably want to harm Bolton seriously if they crossed paths.

“Let’s pretend I didn’t hear it. Just humor me again, how old are you?”

“… how long has it been since King Robert died?”

“Almost three years. Give or take.”

“Two and twenty then,” Theon sighs, looking down at his gloves, and – all right, he knows who he’s talking to, but the one thing he can think of is that if anyone had tried to do this to any of his now deceased sons he’d have killed them with his bare hands or at least he’d have thought about it.

“I don’t think your sister wants to see you die of infections, though.”

“We haven’t seen each other in years and she’s better off without me anyway,” he sighs, and the thing is he sounds like he actually believes it.

“Right. I don’t think that girl you saved wants you to, either.”

“She doesn’t know what’s better for her either.”

“Now that sounds exaggerated. Right, listen, let’s get to the bottom of this. Is there any way I can convince you to come to the godswood?”

“To the pools? Why do you even care?”

“I have orders to do it, believe it or not. And I’m famous for being stubborn.”

“He’s really dying tomorrow?” Theon asks a moment later.

“As far as I know.” Or so Stannis had told him.

“The godswood, you said,” Theon sighs before closing his eyes.

“If you know somewhere else I’m not picky. I asked you what could make you change your mind, you can actually answer me.”

“You – I should _what_?”

“If I have to rope you into it I might as well give you a choice about how to do it.”

Theon takes a deep breath and keeps his eyes closed. “The godswood would be fine, I suppose. But – other than that – no, really, I just –”

“Say it, before you assume it’s not doable.”

“No guards. Not – not anyone if I can help it. If someone has to be there, then it shouldn’t be anyone I know. Not my sister. And not Jeyne. Gods, especially not her.”

“I don’t see a problem with it until now.”

“I wasn’t done. I suppose someone will have to be there. Can you find someone who won’t speak about it or who won’t – I mean, there’s nothing nice to see here. The last thing I need is more people knowing.”

Now that would be a problem. He doesn’t think that any of the guards or of the northmen would care for that part especially, from what he knows.

Well then.

“Let’s say that I come with you.”

“Wait – what? You’re a _Hand_ –”

“Grown up in that lovely place named Flea Bottom, lad. I don’t believe in being high and mighty just because I lucked out. If I go with you no one else will insist to come because they’d know I wouldn’t let you escape, and for what it’s worth, if you don’t want anyone to know whatever it is that I might see, then I won’t tell.”

“You’re – you’re serious about this.”

“I started this, I might as well finish. So?”

He doesn’t know how much time passes before Theon shrugs and swallows before giving him a nod. “Might as well die with real clothes on,” he mutters to himself, and Davos doesn’t try to ask clarifications.

He isn’t even sure he wants to know.

\--

When they leave the room, he tries to keep himself at a reasonable distance regardless of how bad the smell is – the guards take a couple of steps forward the moment the door opens. Theon resolutely looks down at the ground.

“My lord –” one of the guards starts, but Davos isn’t sure he wants to hear the rest.

“It’s fine. We have an agreement and I’m going with him – you’re dismissed for the moment.”

The guards don’t look entirely convinced but they do let them go, and Theon looks shocked at how easily they complied, but he says nothing and follows Davos dutifully.

Davos doesn’t fail to notice that he grimaces in pain whenever he tries to walk faster than a certain pace, but he doesn’t complain about that either and Davos doesn’t ask.

When they’re about to leave, he realizes something.

“Do you want the cloak now? I have one,” he points out, since it’s cold outside.

“No point in making it dirty. ‘Sides, I had it worse when I escaped the first time.”

By the time they arrive at the godswood, there’s a trail of dirty snow behind Theon and he’s trembling out of the cold – out in the open, he looks even worse off than he did in the room.

At least, Davos figures when he puts a hand into the water, the pool is in fact hot.

“Uhm. Right. If you want me to look the other way –”

“It doesn’t matter,” Theon replies shakily. He takes off his shoes, then his gloves – he throws them on the ground along with his soiled shirt. The breeches fall down on their own the moment he pulls at the laces and Davos swallows as he wraps his arms around his own sides and steps down into the pool. Of course he was hurting when he walked, he’s _missing toes_. And he had resolutely not looked after the breeches went, but he really hopes that whatever he glimpsed, he glimpsed wrong. When he looks at the pool again, he realizes it had to be deeper than it looked – Theon is sitting on the side, but the water goes up to his chin.

“Here,” Davos sighs, and he tosses a bar of soap at him. Theon doesn’t grab it at once – it lands next to him and he takes it after, and Davos can’t help noticing that the water is becoming brown.

“My thanks,” Theon mutters, curling on himself more, and Davos turns his back at him.

“You don’t have to look away,” Theon says a moment later.

“Do you actually want me not to?”

“I said it before,” he says quietly. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”

“The more you say that, the less I’ll be convinced of it. I wouldn’t want a perfect stranger to see me naked, so why should I assume that it’s valid for me and not for you?”

“I wish it was the worst I could think of,” Theon answers, and Davos sighs before turning back, figuring that at least he’ll keep an eye on him. He’s using the soap bar to scrub at his legs right now, and Davos can’t see much of what’s below the surface, but damn if the white hair doesn’t look dreadful in the daylight.

They say nothing as Theon seems to decide that he’s done with his legs – the soap bar is half the size it was at the beginning when he raises an arm and puts it out of the water. Then his fingers begin to shake as he sees his ungloved left hand and the bar falls from his fingers, and – right, considering that the water is beyond light brown now, Davos figures it’s lost for good.

Not a problem, he has another, but then he realizes that Theon is not moving at all, almost freezing, as he looks from his fingers to the place where the soap fell.

“I brought two,” Davos says before this can escalate. “I’m going to get the second.”

“I think I’m just going to lose it again,” Theon says miserably – he brings both hands out from the water and they’re trembling wildly.

Still, his nails are still covered in dirt and the closer Davos gets, the more dead skin he sees.

“Is that the only part you’re missing?” Davos asks, hoping that this doesn’t turn out horribly. But he can see no other option.

“Yes. Why?”

Davos goes and kneels behind him, in a clean patch of snow, before sighing and taking the second piece of soap out of his pack.

“Because I could take care of it.”

“What – why would you even?”

Davos shrugs. “When I get an order, I usually see it through the end. Which is why I’m offering. I’m not going to do anything if you say no.”

Theon visibly swallows before he turns just a bit and sighs before holding out his shaking right hand. 

Davos tries to be as quick and neutral as possible – he shoves the bar of soap under the fingernails until there’s enough of it that the dirt might go away on its own when the hand goes back into the water again, and he tries not to vomit when he sees that the wrist was definitely flayed on the other side. He lets it go when he’s done and he waits a bit, until Theon resolutely does not look at him as he holds out his left hand.

The scarring where his two missing fingers should have been is still angry red and there’s a nail completely missing from the middle finger, and it’s shaking so hard that Davos has to keep his left hand around Theon’s wrist in order to go about his business. He admits he goes about the left a lot slower than he had about the right, but when he lets it go it doesn’t shake half as much.

He waits for a bit, then Theon takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

“Do you – do you have a knife?” He sounds everything but sure of what he’s asking.

“Yes. Why?”

“Might as well cut the hair, it won’t exactly look that better regardless.”

“Not that I don’t agree, but you don’t look that able to use it.”

“I didn’t say anything about using it,” Theon whispers. “I mean. Just if you would. If not, it’s no matter.”

He hadn’t expected that, but – he went this far, he might as well finish it.

“All right.”

He takes his dagger out of the sheath and Theon sits up so that his head is outside the water entirely – Davos can’t help noticing that the moment he moves closer, he goes still all over again. He doesn’t think he moves at all as Davos grabs chunks of dead hair and hacks it off – no point in trying to salvage what can’t be salvaged. By the time he’s done, what’s left looks still a sickly shade of white but at least it makes a slightly less horrible picture.

“There,” he says, and Theon’s shoulders visibly relax all the pent-up tension.

The more this goes on, the more Davos feels sick.

“All right,” Theon says under his breath a moment later, more as if he’s telling himself that rather than anyone else. “Are there clothes?”

“Towels too. You’re done?”

“As much as I can be.”

Davos gets the pack and puts the folded towels on the side, always on the clean patch of snow.

Theon takes a deep breath, grabs one and stands up – the water gets to his waist, but he grabs the first towel and wraps it around his shoulders in moments.

Enough for Davos to see the patchwork of different shades of pink and whip marks on his back.

No turning one’s cloak justifies any of this, he thinks helplessly as Theon dries himself off or tries to, and then asks for a shirt with a voice so small it’s barely audible. Davos hands the shirt over and takes the towel back – thankfully whoever picked the shirt chose one that had to get pulled from the head rather than laced. He can hear Theon’s teeth chattering as he reaches for the towel again and wraps it around his waist before sitting down on the side of the pool and getting entirely out of it. Davos throws him a pair of socks first and smallclothes later, and he resolutely does not look when Theon moves away the towel. He really doesn’t want to check if the scarring he had thought he’d seen before was a trick of the light or not. The breeches were out already and when he looks back, Theon is lacing them too tight with shaking fingers, but at least they hold up. He puts his old boots back on and then Davos throws at him the cloak he had brought – it doesn’t help much though, since Theon keeps on shaking even as he wraps it around his shoulders.

Davos feels kind of helpless now – he did his job and the only things smelling right now are Theon’s old clothes, but he’s not entirely sure that he’s allowed to feel good with himself because he did his job.

He takes off his fur cloak then – he’s been through worst weather than this, and he has three layers of clothes underneath – Theon has one.

“Here,” he says, handing it over.

“What – no, I –”

“You can return it when we’re back at the castle,” Davos shrugs, but Theon makes no move and so he moves behind him and throws it on his shoulders without listening to the feeble protests that try to come as he does it. “Seriously. I was told to get you to clean up, not to make you die of frostbite, and something tells me you’re not standing up anytime soon.”

“I’m –”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. Take your time, I’m not in a hurry.”

“Why?” Davos is almost glad he’s not looking at Theon in the face – he’s never heard anyone sounds so much at a loss in his entire life.

“Whatever you’ve done, I can bet gold you didn’t deserve any of that and judging you isn’t exactly my place. I like to think that I can do better than letting you freeze to death.”

He doesn’t exactly expect an answer, but he gets a strangled thanks a moment later.

Theon stands up a short while later – he glances at his clothes, then sighs and turns his back on them. They walk in silence, and then Theon stops midway.

“Just – don’t – if my sister asks –”

“If anyone asks, I was sitting behind a tree and didn’t see anything. With anyone, I mean _anyone_.”

Theon closes his eyes, gives him a small nod and still looks like he can’t believe that he’s heard it, but he doesn’t ask further and starts walking again. Davos looks at his back as he moves forward, his own cloak way too big on him, but he’s keeping his shoulders straight and he knows that the end of this is nowhere near.

He doesn’t want to assume that he might actually care about what happens to Theon Greyjoy from now on, but he has this sneaking suspicion that it doesn’t matter what he wants – if he knows himself well, then it probably means he does already.

He should probably try to forget that fleeting thought at once, but truth is, he’s not even sure he can.

He takes a deep breath and follows – he can worry about how much he doesn’t really feel like he’s done his job right and should wash his hands off this later.

\--

Thing is, he doesn’t get to wash his hands off anything.

He takes back his furs from Theon when they get back to Winterfell, and he sees him to his own room, and he glares at the guards when they breathe in relief the moment they realize that he’s not smelling, and then he leaves and spends the next four hours unable to think about anything else.

 _Stop it_ , he tells himself. _He betrayed his closest friend, killed two children and ruined his own life, and he knew what he was doing. There’s absolutely no reason why you should feel sorry for him. Let it go. You don’t even know him, gods._

That moderately works, because that’s one part of him saying that. The other is playing an entirely different music.

_Yes, fine, but it still didn’t mean that he deserved such treatment. And he said he was nineteen when he went and fucked it all up for Robb Stark and himself, and you know perfectly that for all they say, no one is a man grown at fifteen, everyone makes stupid mistakes at that age. And fine, he deserved to lose his head for it, but that’s not what happened, is it? And who says that their own sister is better off without them? You can feel sorry for him. Hells, even Stannis probably feels sorry for him, if you know him as well as you think you do, and you heard him right._

_Right, and what should I even do about that? It’s not like I can do something about that anyway, can’t I?_

_And what if it had been one of_ them _?_

Davos already knows the answer to that – if it was any of his now deceased four sons, he’d have wanted to kill Ramsay Bolton with his bare hands, and not quickly or painlessly. But it wasn’t one of them. The thing is, he has an idea that no one ever tried to ransom the lad, and he’s pretty sure that Balon Greyjoy died well enough after Bolton torched Winterfell, and – who _wouldn’t_ even try to do it at least?

He’s lost in his own thoughts when he runs into Asha Greyjoy, who’s walking the hallway with a face that looks like a rainstorm for how cloudy her expression is.

“Lord Seaworth,” she tells him before he can greet her. “I see that I have to give you my thanks.”

“Your – oh. Right. No need.”

“How did you even convince him?”

“Uhm, I merely figured that letting him pick how he wanted it could be an option, but – I’m not even sure. At some point he said yes, but I was sure he’d have kept on refusing.”

“Well, at least someone did. Gods, sometimes I wish I never listened to my father, for how much I loved him,” she says under her breath.

“Excuse me?”

She sighs and shakes her head. “Since they took him hostage, my – our father considered him lost. And when he was back, he – he could have been better to him. I could have been better to him, but I found ridiculously amusing that he thought he could come back after ten years and inherit when I had earned my right, and – I wasn’t. That stunt he pulled? He did it mostly because he wanted to impress my father and show him that he could do better than me, and – I guess there was more to it, but when he never came back, my father merely said that it showed what kind of person he was. Not the kind he needed, obviously. And I was stupid enough to never press him or ask. Now – I can tell him forever that it was also our fault, but he’ll keep on saying that we were both right and he doesn’t really deserve me giving a damn, and – that’s it. Pretty much.”

“I don’t see you doing it wrong by him right now.”

“It’s probably too late,” she says, sounding disappointed. “And you probably didn’t ask to hear any of this.”

“It’s fine. I asked first, sort of.”

“I wish I just hadn’t assumed that he died for good. I loved my father, but – I suppose he never was much of one to him in the first place.”

She excuses herself and leaves a moment later, and Davos thinks that he can at least understand part of the deal now.

_And why do you care?_

_Because it wasn’t exactly fair, was it?_

He thinks about what he saw in that moment when Theon wasn’t quick enough to cover himself with the towel as he went out of the pool and he doesn’t feel any less revolted.

And he can’t help thinking, _if someone does the things he did to impress their father, then they weren’t the ones who had it mostly wrong_. No one should need to have to do that to impress their own blood, or at least, not the way he sees it.

He shakes his head and goes in the other direction.

\--

“I see that I can count on you to get things done,” Stannis tells him at dinner. “Every guard on Greyjoy watch duty wants to build you a statue in the yard without realizing that endearing that smell would have been less of an effort.”

At least he thinks that it was a stupid complain, too, Davos figures.

“What are you planning on doing with him?” He tries to make it sound as if he’s merely curious.

“His sister already had him sign the papers she needs. I suppose I’ll keep him for a hostage so that she doesn’t think about stepping out of line, though since I need him alive I guess that it wouldn’t be a good idea to have him staying here.”

“It probably wouldn’t,” Davos agrees.

“By the way, I suppose you will be happy to hear that I don’t have any more dangerous missions for you. Though I might have a bothersome one.”

“And it would be?”

“I need someone to go back to the Stormlands and keep an eye on what allies I have left there. Just to make sure they don’t think that I came North and forgot about them and think about turning to Mace Tyrell when I’m not looking.”

“And that would be me?”

“It would be you. I have Rickon Stark now, thanks to you, so I don’t need to secure the North anymore. But I need to be here if problems arise when the darned wights are concerned, if I don’t want the kingdom I inherit to be inhabited by living corpses. I don’t need you here, even if I would like you to be – the company would be entirely less dull.”

Davos smiles at that, not trying to hide it, and then –

Then his tongue speaks before his brain can tell it to stop, because he had the idea and he just can’t shake it out of his head.

“Then – may I suggest that you send Greyjoy with me?”

“… Explain yourself. Why?”

“Well, you said that he shouldn’t be spending the winter here. It’s warmer in the Stormlands, for sure, and he’d still be your hostage regardless.”

“That makes sense, but it didn’t answer the biggest part of the question. Which would be, why would you ever want to be saddled with the likes of him?”

Davos shrugs, not knowing how to put it into decent words. “It doesn’t seem like he would be much of a problem. And – he looks like he could use a break from Winterfell generally.”

“That’s not all. Don’t try to fool me and say the entire spiel.”

Davos takes a deep breath and figures that it’s time to tell the whole truth. “He’s two and twenty. I can’t take looking at him while knowing that.” That’s pretty much it. He sees Stannis’s eyes go almost imperceptibly soft for exactly one moment before he’s back to business.

“Well, I suppose it would be a decent arrangement. And he probably could do a lot worse than that. Fine by me, if you’re so sure that it might be a good idea.”

“I suppose that it might be debatable, but I can’t come up with a better option.”

Apparently Stannis can’t either, since he doesn’t tell Davos differently, and when he leaves he can only think, _what in the seven hells did I just do_.

He supposes that it’s time he writes his wife again, and at least this time it won’t be a letter that she’ll receive just after he dies, so he’ll be grateful for that.

\--

The day after, he figures that he should at least go and talk to Greyjoy, if only for fairness. He isn’t entirely surprised when he arrives just in time to see his sister leaving the room.

“Lord Seaworth,” she sighs as she comes closer to him. “If you came here to inform my brother of your king’s plans, I already did that for myself.”

“I did, but – well, I figured I’d least talk to him before leaving. I’m – I just figured that it was the better option in the circumstances.”

She stares at him for a moment, looking as if she doesn’t doubt what he’s saying at all, but still, she looks… half-disappointed and half tired.

“Oh, it is. I’m pretty sure that if he came back with me it’d turn into a disaster, and I can see why your king doesn’t want it in the first place. It’s just – I guess this won’t be the time I manage to do right by him, but hopefully there will be a chance. If he ever wants to listen to you, since he wasn’t exactly listening to me before, just tell him that I was hoping for the same thing as him.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ll understand soon enough.”

She leaves then, and Davos only feels completely confused, but – fine. He supposes that he will get it eventually, and so he enters the room after knocking twice.

As he had expected, the lad is sitting on the bed, looking like abject misery made flesh.

“My lord,” he says when he notices that Davos let himself in.

“You do realize that no one is taking your head anytime soon? Because you look like someone told you just that.”

“She might as well have said the same,” Theon shrugs before wrapping his cloak tighter around himself. “I had suspected it would come to it, but – that’s not of import, I guess. When should we leave?”

“Two or three days from now,” Davos replies. “But you haven’t exactly been clear.”

Theon shrugs again. “Can I?”

“I didn’t ask you to lie to me, did I?”

“I spent half of my life being Ned Stark’s hostage, my lord. Not going into what happened after, do you think that knowing that I have to be that all over again is a tempting notion?”

 _Oh_. Right. Not even that hard to imagine – he should have realized that even before asking. Of course _that_ would be the problem.

“Well, it doesn’t seem to me that your sister would do anything that might give me reason to have your head.” Davos is sure of that – good thing too, because the last thing he wants is executing people.

“I guess so,” Theon agrees reluctantly, and then doesn’t say anything more.

“I will let you know,” Davos says after a long and entirely too awkward silence. “If it consoles you, I’m not bringing the guards along.”

“… What?”

“You don’t look like someone who’d try to escape in the first place, lad. And I wouldn’t want to have them behind me at any moment either.”

For a moment Theon looks at him as if he’s genuinely and sincerely surprised, and then he gives him a tiny nod before looking down at his hands again.

 _Just what you needed,_ the part of him who’s still trying to figure out what in the seven hells he’s trying to do here says a moment later. _Or what anyone at Cape Wrath needs. Couldn’t you just go and take some needed rest instead of saddling yourself with another responsibility?_

 _Since when do I ever take some rest in the first place_ , the other part replies, wearily but resigned. Davos goes to speak with Lord Manderly to arrange his trip from White Harbor’s port and figures that he’ll say that he wants a ship with comfortable beds because he needs some decent sleep after that mission he was sent on, even if it’s not strictly true.

\--

They do, in fact, leave two days from then, and Davos has kind of lost any hope that this trip might go in a different way than him speaking and Theon answering deferentially, since it’s the way the only two conversations they had since then went.

Except that he was wrong.

It’s just him, Theon and some seven or so soldiers going with them for a bit – better not to spare men, and Devan is still at the Wall, as far as Davos knows – but since it’s an official matter he can’t leave early in the morning as had hoped. Clearly it had to be the day Stannis started hearing both prisoners and non-prisoners about the Red Wedding (Davos did say that he’d give the northerners justice after all, and that’s why they’re siding with him, aren’t they?) so when they leave the room isn’t only full of northern lords, but also of chained Freys and Bolton followers.

Incidentally, a good number of those Freys had been in the main hall when Lord Manderly received him at White Harbor.

Davos can’t help feeling extremely pleased as he sees them looking at him as if they just saw a ghost – too bad for them, right?

He bides his king goodbye and starts to hurry out of the room when the first accident of what he suspects will be many happens – he had been walking in the rear of his group as he left for last, so he does see perfectly one of said people who were at White Harbor spitting at Theon’s feet and asking him how _Reek_ was doing lately and whether he changed masters now. Theon visibly grimaces and looks as if he’d let the ground swallow him whole, and – oh, fuck them. He shamed these idiots once, he’s going to do it twice.

“Careful there,” Davos says, stepping in between them. “I could always go back to the king and tell him that it would please me if he threw you in a dungeon and threw away the key, since I remember your face pretty well. I’m not so sure about your name, but I could bet my entire hand that you were one of the people cheering when that cousin of yours started giving his account of the Red Wedding. Or weren’t you?”

The man goes pale at once. “I wasn’t –

“You were definitely cheering when he said that they had slew a monster and that Robb Stark _turned into a real wolf_ , but I’m also sure that it won’t be the story you’ll tell my king now, will it?”

No answer comes – exactly as he had expected.

“Now. I’m not going to let someone who not only broke guest right but cheered recalling it do anything with my prisoner. Especially when they wanted me dead not even half a year ago. Not that excusing yourself will do you any good since the king is well-aware of my version of the story, but I intend to be sure that everyone else gets the message.”

Then he turns towards the soldier at his side. “Bring this one to His Grace and tell him that he should go straight to the dungeons without being heard. You can meet us outside.”

Then he turns his back on the man, who’s still trying to say that he didn’t mean anything by it, and heads for the yard.

When they’re outside, he hears Theon clearing his throat at his side.

“My lord, I –”

“Don’t even try to thank me. It was sort of personal in the first place.”

“Personal?”

“Long story. I can tell you on the way, if you want.”

Theon gives him a feeble nod and Davos goes back to making sure that his horse is properly saddled.

He does, in fact, tell that story as they ride slowly along the road, wrapped in two furs each.

When he’s done, Theon is staring at him with eyes so wide that it’d look ridiculous, if only he had more meat on his cheekbones.

“You – you called them out on lying about R – the Red Wedding?”

Davos pretends not to notice that he had been about to say _Robb_.

“Lying isn’t my strongest suit. I figured that if I had to tell the truth, I could have done that properly.”

“But – they could have you killed for it. And it wasn’t even – I mean, you weren’t –”

“Lad, the fact that Robb Stark was not my king doesn’t mean that I like the notion of tricking people into eating my bread and then slaughter them when they have no reason to expect it like a low-rate sellsword. At least Stark was fighting his war honorably and I wasn’t exactly going to let them take pride for what they did. And from what I could see, they’d have asked for my head anyway – no point in letting them do it too easily.”

Theon doesn’t answer straight, but Davos can bet that he’s looking at him with uttermost respect right now.

Maybe – _maybe_ – this trip won’t be entirely miserable, he dares to hope. Figures that it’d happen because at some point in his life he stood up for Robb Stark even if the latter will never know it, but he won’t go look at gift horses in the mouth if it means that they can actually have a two-sided conversation.

\--

More conversation doesn’t happen until that evening – Davos doesn’t try to push it, but he does notice that Theon looks remarkably relieved when he tells their escort to go back to Winterfell and that they can get to White Arbor on their own. When he gets them food, he’s done in half the time it takes Theon, who takes great care of turning away from him so that Davos can’t see his mouth. He gets a glimpse at some point – right. The teeth. Of course it takes him that long.

Davos doesn’t comment on that at all and he hopes to just going to sleep for a while because he’s dead tired. Then he bolts the door to the room they have to share and turns back just to see Theon spreading his cloak on the ground.

“Humor me here. What do you think you’re doing?”

“… going to sleep.” He says it so matter-of-factly that Davos feels his skin crawl.

“On the ground.”

“Where else?”

“Humor me again, that’s what you’ve been doing also at Winterfell all this time?”

Theon just nods instead of answering properly.

“And no one tried to convince you otherwise?”

He gets a shake of the head. Davos counts the probabilities of any of the guards never knowing of it and he’s sure that they’re pretty low. He kind of wants to punch the wall, but it’d probably be a bad idea and from what he sees, the last thing he needs is to get the lad even more scared than he actually is.

“If I tell you that you really shouldn’t it’s never going to be enough to convince you, is it?”

“It’s where I should stay,” Theon says a moment later, sounding like someone who’s reciting his part rather than like someone who really thinks that it’s the truth.

“As far as I knew, just dogs sleep on the ground.”

Theon’s shoulders go rigid at once and he shrugs… knowingly.

Davos suddenly realizes what he’s just said and the mild horrified sensation he had been feeling until now leaves the mild territory in favor of becoming completely fucking horrified.

“You didn’t actually sleep with them, did you?”

“I – I did? And – well. Better with them than without. It was warmer.”

Davos doesn’t know if the worst thing is the answer itself or the fact that Theon sounds as if he thinks that it’s completely normal. Or normal _for him_.

He might have never met Robb Stark in person, but if he was anywhere like his father, Davos can bet that he wouldn’t have wanted any of that, and he was the only person who had anything to say about that situation.

By now, Davos has realized that trying to talk this out like he would to anyone else won’t work.

So he figures he’ll just have to come up with some other way.

“Right. It’s entirely too late for this, but – let’s just leave it at one thing. You can sleep on the ground if you want, but then you force me to do the same.”

“… what? I’m not –”

“As much as you might not look like it, you’re highborn. If it wasn’t clear to you already, I was born in Flea Bottom and I certainly didn’t have a title then. And I can assure you that where I come from you only slept on the ground if you couldn’t even find some coin for hay. So… in good conscience, I can’t let you sleep there if I’m using the bed. If you think that I shouldn’t give my back one more reason to protest, then you’re using the bed too.”

Theon opens his mouth as he shakes his head.

“Don’t even try to say what I suspect you want to say. I’ve openly disobeyed some of my king’s orders and you’ve met him, nothing that you can say will change my mind.”

There’s a moment when Theon closes his eyes and looks sincerely pained at having to make the choice, but then he stands up unsteadily and climbs on the nearest bed, without changing clothes and without even getting under the covers.

Davos isn’t going to push this more than he already has and gets ready to go to bed himself.

Between one thing and the other, though, he keeps on turning on his side and doesn’t manage to slow his thoughts down enough to actually go to sleep, and that’s why he’s wide awake when he hears a pained whimper come from the other side of the room.

He turns to his right side, glancing at the bed. Theon is shaking all over and sounding as if he’s crying, and then he says _stop_ and _no_ and _it can’t be_ and _no I don’t know him_ , and just when Davos decides that he’d better wake him up and put a stop to it, his body goes almost unnaturally still. A moment later he hears him gasping and taking in a couple of deep breaths. Davos grabs his sheets and blanket and drags it half over his head so that he can see what happens now without Theon risking to notice that he’s awake.

Not that he even would, Davos realizes when Theon sits up on the bed shakily, his forehead falling down on his knees and his shoulders still trembling.

It doesn’t take much for Davos to realize that he’s crying and trying not to make too much noise, and – _well, fuck this_ , that insistent voice in his head says. He stands up, goes to a cupboard in the corner where the owner said he could find extra blankets, he takes one and doesn’t even try to say anything or make his presence known before letting it fall on Theon’s shoulders.

His shoulders go still at once all over again, as if he’s forcing himself to but definitely looking like he’s done this before plenty of times.

Then.

“I’m sorry,” he says in the thinnest voice Davos has ever heard coming from him.

“I wasn’t sleeping and you shouldn’t be sorry about what you dream at night.”

“You didn’t need to –”

“Don’t act like you aren’t freezing on top of everything else.”

“I’m – I’m fine now. You don’t have to –”

“You’re not and anyone would see it. Don’t even try. And – the gods know I’ll wish to take this back minutes from now, but… do you want to talk about it?”

“What?”

Well, Davos thinks, completely out of his depth sounds better than… than whatever he’s sounded like until now.

“Exactly what I said. Look, you’re not fine. And I suspect that maybe discussing it wouldn’t hurt, and I don’t see anyone other than you and me here, do I?”

“Why would you even?”

“Where are we even going? Listen, I know that it wasn’t your decision. It… wasn’t entirely mine, either, but as things are, you’re coming to the Stormlands and I can’t exactly find you a small house on the outskirts of the nearest village. I don’t want to make it any worse for you than it is already, so I would ask. If no one else has done it already, and it doesn’t look like it… well, someone should. Might as well be me. Seems like it’s everything I do, lately. Doing things that someone should do and no one attempts.”

The last thing he expected was for Theon to sob loudly enough to make him stop talking at once. He does it again a second later, and then he isn’t holding himself straight anymore, just crying his eyes out while still hiding his face against his legs.

“I thought I could pretend,” he sobs not too long later. “He wanted – he called me Reek. Maybe someone told you already.”

 _Someone did_ , Davos thinks.

“For a while – I just pretended. I pretended I actually believed it. After all I did spend ten years pretending I didn’t have a care in the world when Lord Stark made sure I attended each execution he had to carry through. It couldn’t have been that much different, could it?”

Right. Davos is already regretting having asked, but he can’t go back on it now, can he?

“Then – after the Red Wedding. I suppose you’d know what they did with him.”

 _Him_ would be Robb Stark, obviously. “You’d suppose right.”

“Has anyone ever wondered where the head ended up? Because they surely didn’t keep it on the body, did they?”

Davos shudders – that sounded mildly hysterical. The thing is… he thinks he’s guessing where this is going. And he doesn’t like it at all.

“And you would know where it is?”

“In the cell in front of mine at the Dreadfort, but before then, he – Ramsay Bolton, I mean – he dropped it in front of me. The skin was already rotting. I screamed my lungs out – what else was I going to do, I think now, but then – he – he flayed one of my fingers until I was begging him to cut it off, you could see the bone, and he wouldn’t do that until I told him I’d never known the person that head belonged to. And he kept it in front of me the whole time, and I said it because I couldn’t see straight anymore, and – he probably knew that it’d have been the worst thing he could make me do, but then again he thought I was pathetic. It wasn’t… entirely like that.”

“How was it then?”

He doesn’t know if what comes after is a snort or another sob. “How about it? My lord, I don’t know how clear it’s been until now, but when it was up to my father, he left me to rot in that dungeon. My sister means well but she should have meant well before. I haven’t seen my mother since I was nine and I don’t think that anyone else who ever was related to me ever gave a damn. I have no fucking clue of what ever went through Robb’s head when I was concerned, but he was – the only person I’ve ever known who ever trusted me. Or – wanted to spend time with me without any obligation. He was – he was more of a brother to me than my real ones, all of them, and now he’s _dead_ and I should have fucking died with him, but if I ever said this out loud to anyone who ever knew him or to his men would they even believe me? They’d tell me that if I wasn’t trying too hard to prove myself to my father he’d be still alive. _That_ is how it was, and I couldn’t even think try to about him for months because I didn’t care for losing any more fucking limbs.” The last few words are barely audible because the more he went on the harder he cried, and after that he just keeps on doing it, sounding beyond miserable.

Not that Davos himself doesn’t feel beyond miserable now, too – gods, if someone ever attempted to put Theon Greyjoy’s life into some kind of song or book it’d be the kind of story you read to children when you want to scare them out of their minds.

“You do know that even if you hadn’t done what you did things might have gone not too differently?”

“Does it even matter? If I had known I’d have probably just killed myself long before I ever thought of taking Winterfell. Too bad I waited this long.”

“Kill yourself…?”

“I should have done it long ago. I had thought I’d do it if my father ever rebelled when I still was in Winterfell, just so that it’d be on my own terms, and then – I was an idiot. I should have done that when I lost Winterfell, but I still thought I could take the black. I thought your king would take care of it, but he didn’t and I should have understood that it was the right time.”

“Why –”

“My lord, it always seems like my life ends up never being _mine_ only for very long, and right now? Right now it’s not.”

The problem – the problem is that Theon is right, Davos had to grudgingly admit. Gods, according to that reasoning he’s ever only had free reign of his actions for not even a year out of two and twenty, and now Davos feels moderately horrible because he volunteered for the role, but – if it hadn’t been him, it’d have been someone else, and not necessarily better, would it?

He can’t even ask something as stupid as _why would you even want to kill yourself_ – he can imagine the answer to that easily enough. Gods, if the only close friend the poor bastard ever had in his life is dead and he feels like he’s going through a repeat of the first time he was someone’s hostage all over again of course he’d want to kill himself.

“Go to sleep for real,” Davos says a moment later, feeling completely inadequate but knowing that there isn’t really more diverse advice he could give.

“… I’m sorry…?”

“You’re exhausted, you look terrible and you have all the reasons in the world to feel like that, but I don’t think that staying on that bed like a log of wood while dying of cold because you wouldn’t even take off your clothes will help you any. You want to have a good cry, there’s a pillow behind you. We can stay here for another day if you don’t want to leave when I’m sure you’ll have slept three hours at most. And keep the blanket. For what it’s worth, if tomorrow you want an hour in some godswood so you can go grieve your friend like everyone else does, just ask.”

Theon looks at him as if he can’t believe that Davos even exists all over again, but then he stands up long enough to lose his outer clothes and crawls under the covers.

Davos waits a short while and then throws another blanket over the one already there, then he heads back to bed.

He falls asleep to soft sobs smothered by the pillow and he can’t help thinking that while he couldn’t avoid outliving the sons he lost at Blackwater, at least he made sure that they were as happy as they could be when they were young. They might have lived in the lowest slum in King’s Landing, but at least all of them were friends with the kids living next door – until Davos earned his knighthood with onions and salted fish. He had always thought that if you were born a lord you had it a lot easier. Well, he had been apparently wrong.

He’s pretty sure that if given the chance Theon would have traded his childhood with any of them without blinking and he doesn’t even know what to make of it. 

\--

“I said we don’t need to leave today.”

“I’m fine,” Theon insists. Davos tries not to sigh out loud – all right then. If they leave now, even if they stop along the way, they should get to White Harbor in the evening, and there’s a ship waiting for them. He notices that during breakfast Theon doesn’t touch food and he stops himself at the last second from trying to convince him not to skip on it – if he has slept as little as his red-rimmed eyes suggest maybe he can’t even keep it down. It’s not long before he sees a godswood along the road, and – well, who knows if they’re going to see another before White Harbor.

“I meant what I said yesterday, you know,” Davos says, stopping his horse.

“I don’t need to –”

“That’s not the point. Do you want to?” Not like he needs an answer – he can read the lad’s face like an open book. Actually, a lot more easily than he’d read an open book. “Don’t even answer. Just go and do whatever you have to. I’m going to wait here.”

“Shouldn’t you come?”

Davos shrugs. “I should, but something tells me that whatever you’d do in there would be your business only. Also, there isn’t any anything around here other than the inn we just left. Even if you tried to escape, you wouldn’t go very far.”

“I wouldn’t –”

“Exactly my point. Go pay your respects. There’s no hurry.”

Theon stares at him for a moment before swallowing and leaving, looking like someone who wants to take a chance before he finds out he doesn’t have the option any more. Davos doesn’t follow. He’s tempted for a moment, but if there are two things he’s pretty sure of in this wretched business – the first is that Theon can’t have had much time just to himself in the last year or so and that he spent most of his time altogether being lied to, and he’s not going to do either thing. Not that Davos thinks he’d escape in the first place.

Turns out that he was right about all of that – Theon comes back after a while. It wasn’t a short time, but it wasn’t that long either. He looks like someone who spent the previous hour or so crying his eyes out, but he looks slightly less anguished, if anything.

“Thank you,” he croaks before getting back on his horse, his eyes cast down.

“It was nothing,” Davos replies truthfully, and mounts back on his own.

He’s not going to ask what went down and he’s pretty sure he won’t in the foreseeable future.

\--

He had thought that after boarding the ship and leaving, he’d go get a good night’s rest in his own cabin after some decent food. The food is in fact good, but when he goes out on deck with the intention of spending a couple of minutes there before turning in, he sees Theon vomiting what little food he had for dinner over the rails.

He stares at one of the men in the crew, who looked mildly amused by the sight, and moves closer.

“You could have said you might get sea-sick, you know.”

“I never used to,” Theon replies feebly before dry heaving another time. He leans back, looking completely miserable all over again. “I didn’t when I left Pyke and I didn’t when I went back, for that matter.” He wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand and closes his remaining fingers around the rails. Davos looks at the newly growing skin on his wrists and shudders ever so slightly.

“When I left Winterfell I just looked at the sea and thought I was free. What an idiot,” Theon says under his breath before shutting his own mouth – for a moment Davos is sure he’ll throw up again, but he eventually doesn’t.

Davos feels kind of bad for him all over again. It’s not like he’s an expert about Iron Islands costumes, but he figures that being born there and disliking sea would feel weird at least.

“Not that my father would be surprised.” Davos isn’t even sure he heard that one right – it was spoken so softly it was a miracle he barely heard it at all, but if he didn’t mishear then he isn’t surprised.

“Lad, seems to me like your father would have been hard to please regardless,” he says after a moment, and then Theon jerks to his left, looking at him as if he’s expecting a blow to the face.

“I – I didn’t mean to –”

“You don’t have to pretend you don’t hate his guts. Hells, looks to me like he didn’t exactly earn the contrary.”

“I doubt that it matters.”

“I guess for most people it doesn’t,” Davos has to concede. But he hasn’t served Stannis Baratheon to the best of his possibilities for years for nothing, and he knows how it looks like to do what your duty towards your family asks you even if they haven’t earned your efforts at all. Not to mention that he always thought that both the king and Renly were complete idiots for not seeing that Stannis’s bitterness wasn’t inborn but was derived from their treatment of him for a good part, if anything. “Doesn’t mean it’s right.”

“Sorry?”

“I guess that for your lot it’s different, but as far as I’m concerned you can’t take people for granted just because you’re related. You can’t expect people to respect you or like you if you don’t give them some reason to. Maybe it’s just the kind of commoner logic my current peers like to spit on, but as far as I’m concerned if no one gives you a reason to respect them, you can disrespect them as much as you want. Related or not.”

“It’s not logic I’d spit on for sure,” Theon sighs, not looking entirely convinced, but at least the notion seems to be intriguing.

“Well, seems to me like you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for. I’d get some sleep if I were you,” he says, and leaves before he can see the reaction or hear the answer – he’s not even sure of what he hopes for, but he has a feeling that it would be something he wouldn’t like.

He just hopes that it won’t be awkward in the morning.

\--

He sleeps the night through and he doesn’t see Theon on the deck until just before lunch – he walks out of his cabin looking like someone who has slept a bit though not overtly much. Also in the daylight he really does look emaciated still, Davos thinks.

Clearly, he skips lunch.

“You know, you should eat,” he tells Theon hours later.

“I’d throw it up anyway.”

“You still can’t afford not to.”

“I’d be doing the world a favor then.”

Davos just wishes he could be angry, but he can’t. Not when Theon still speaks as if he’s wholly convinced of that. “All the same, I haven’t survived Blackwater, a beheading and going to and back from Skaagos just to have your sister strangle me because you died of starvation.”

“My sister –”

“Your sister would do that. I’m not going to tell you to do it when you’re feeling sick, but at least do try.”

He gets just another shrug in exchange. Great. Not that he expected any more, but maybe he’s pushing too much. And this isn’t an issue where he can somehow gain favor because he stood up for a dead king, is it? Sure, he could try and say that Robb Stark probably wouldn’t have wanted him to die of starvation, but it’s not like he ever even met the lad – it would probably backfire, even if he’s pretty sure he’s not wrong, from what little he knows. Actually, if Stark really was the only person who ever cared either way, he’d really like to know why it was the case – obviously he saw things others didn’t.

 _Good luck to me if I ever want to find out_ , he thinks. Meanwhile Theon is looking at him as if he wants to say something but won’t and Davos can’t help wondering if this time he really bit more than he could chew, because he’s finding himself at a total loss.

“I’m sorry,” Theon says under his breath a moment later, and – well. That was… really not what Davos had been expecting.

“For what?”

“You – you shouldn’t be worrying. I mean, I see that you are and – you really shouldn’t. It’s not worth it.”

 _Is there a limit to how bad can this get?_ , Davos thinks as he desperately tries to find some kind of appropriate answer to that, because he’s not really sure he can word it decently.

“You do realize you’re excusing yourself for things you can’t help?”

“Better safe than sorry.” Then he visibly winces. “I mean – I wasn’t implying that you might – ah, fuck, I just meant –” He stops himself as he realizes that he swore out loud and it would be almost amusing if it wasn’t making Davos want to put them both out of their misery.

“Lad, just calm down. I get it. I know what you meant.” At least he thinks he does. “You don’t have to apologize for anything. And I have no interest whatsoever in making your life more miserable, so just don’t. You’re worrying for nothing.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you even care.”

 _Good question all over again_ , the part of him that wanted nothing to do with this hostage business says. He has no clue of why exactly he does, but he’s pretty sure of one thing at least.

“I don’t like seeing anyone treated unfairly and I think that if I ever met someone who was, that’d be you. There’s also the part where it’s my duty to make sure you don’t die on me, but I have this inkling that the last thing you want right now is someone not being straight with you.”

Theon stares at him as if he’s just grown another two heads again and Davos sighs and leaves – he suspects that the conversation dies here.

They don’t see each other until dinner. Actually, the last thing Davos expects is Theon walking inside what passes for a mess hall on this ship, sitting on a chair as if even moving hurts and obviously forcing himself to finish half of a regular portion of dinner, but he doesn’t leave a moment later and he doesn’t throw it up on the ground. He glances at Davos for a moment, almost nervously, before looking down at his plate.

For a moment Davos doesn’t get it, but then he recognizes the look. Or at least, he thinks he’s seen that look more than once. On six different faces. All of which were related to him. For a moment he ponders how bad of an idea would it be if he pretended that he didn’t notice it. Or how worse it would be if he actually acknowledged it instead.

Then he asks himself, _when did I ever pretend in circumstances like this_?

He stands up and walks towards the way out – Theon’s seat is the one nearest the door.

“Nice. Keep it up,” he says, and doesn’t bother for an answer.

Their eyes meet for a moment and as Davos walks out he can’t shake the feeling that if this isn’t the first time anyone’s ever told Theon anything like that, then it’s the second. Or third at most. He looks as if he doesn’t even know what to do with it even if he was maybe hoping for it, somewhere deep down.

He’s definitely not surprised that the moment the lad went out in the world and started taking decisions for himself he couldn’t get one right to save his life.

Fine then. At least he can have the small comfort that whatever he ends up doing, at least it’s not going to make the situation any worse.

\--

When, three days later, it’s obvious that Theon is putting in some effort in trying to keep down a half-full meal each day regardless of the seasickness, he doesn’t know if he should feel flattered, if he should find it depressing or if he should find some way to get rid of the responsibility. It probably says everything that he discards the latter option first – apparently he can’t do away with any responsibility if he tries. So he carefully does not mention it out loud but keeps on making sure that it’s obvious that he appreciates the effort. Not that it takes him that much in the first place, right?

Not that it doesn’t mean the situation is any less weird, either, but he’s had to deal with worse. Everything is just made more complicated by the fact that while Theon obviously wants some validation of his efforts at the same time he still looks like someone waiting for things to go horribly at any given moment, and Davos shouldn’t probably be thinking about it that much.

Until he remembers something Theon had said that night at the inn. Specifically, the bit about Ned Stark making him attend executions.

Now, Davos really never could think badly of Ned Stark in any circumstances – fine, he might have wondered more than once how he could genuinely like Robert Baratheon that much, but he always thought that since they had met a long time before it would change things. Also he was the only person in the king’s entourage who had ever bothered to go thank both Stannis and him for their efforts during Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion, and considering that back then not many highborn lords even spared Davos half a glance he’s not ever going to think that Stark wasn’t a good man. Still, he can’t help thinking that he went all wrong about his hostage – he can get not wanting to get attached to someone you might have to kill, and he can get not wanting your family to get attached to him either, but bringing the kid to attend executions when he could have been in the wrong position for nothing he had strictly done just seems completely idiotic. Stark didn’t even realize it, probably, but it doesn’t mean that it didn’t contribute to the entire mess it turned out to be.

Well then. He should probably make something clear then.

One week and a half into the journey to the Stormlands, he knocks on Theon’s door after lunch. When he’s told to come in, he does and doesn’t go farther than leaning against the door. Theon is sitting up on the bed, still looking like he needs to gain weight really soon, though at least he wasn’t sleeping on the ground. Better like that.

“My lord?”

“Listen, I just thought I should make one thing clear. I realize that the circumstances aren’t ideal, but – I know you think this is going to end exactly the same way the first time did.”

Theon shrugs. “Why shouldn’t it?”

“For one, your sister isn’t your father. You can think what you want, but she’s not going to do anything that might make you lose your head.”

“How do you even know that?”

“I spoke to her more than once. She’s not going to be what kills you. And you can believe me or not, but I have no interest whatsoever in making your life miserable while I’m at it. If you think that I’m going to do whatever the equivalent to making you watch while I cut someone’s head, you’re wrong.”

“How – how do you know –”

“I didn’t know, it was a guess. But if you’re worrying about that, you have no reason to. Before you ask me how would you know that for sure… I guess you can’t, but if it’s worth anything, I tend to mean what I say. Then again I guess you don’t know that either way because I could have been lying all along.”

Theon swallows, and doesn’t say anything. So it was probably what he was thinking.

“Well, it’s not like I can give you any proof of that other than my word. Just – if you’re willing to take it then I’ll try to not make you regret it.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think, though.”

“Excuse me?”

Theon shrugs. “If my father had gone through with his rebellion plan before Lord Stark died, but while he was in King’s Landing… it wouldn’t have been him cutting my head. But someone would have. Even if they didn’t want to.”

Ah. Right. Well, Robb Stark definitely wouldn’t have wanted to, from what Davos has figured out. He can see what the problem is though.

“You aren’t taking a couple of things into account, though.”

“What?”

“The first, again, is that your sister won’t do anything that might give my king a reason to execute you, regardless of what you think. The second… I don’t think you met the Lady Melisandre, but do you know of R’hollor? Or the lord of light, however the hell they call it?”

“The lord of – is that weird religion from Essos they practice in your king’s camp? The one that says you have to burn people to get power?”

“That one.”

Theon shrugs. “According to the Drowned God you have to drown people for that. Doesn’t seem that different. So?”

“So, there was this bastard of King Robert’s who everyone had decided should be burned for that reason. My king included. And I might have smuggled it out of the castle.”

Theon’s eyes go wide all over again. “You – you _smuggled a prisoner out_.”

“I thought it was a stupid idea. Turns out that my king did in fact realize it not long later. And my head is still on my shoulders.”

“But – didn’t you disobey an order?”

“My lowborn commoner logic said that obeying obviously stupid orders isn’t worth the hassle. Especially if the person you’re serving isn’t unreasonable. My point was that if I was told to take someone’s head and I think it’s a completely stupid notion, then I doubt I’d do it at once. Or at all. Not that I think it’s happening. I didn’t exactly volunteer for this just to be in that position.” He’s about to add something, then he realized that he said something he really wasn’t planning to say.

Theon is looking at him like he must be mad – of course he is. He _volunteered_ for it after all.

“What – it wasn’t – did you – wasn’t it the king’s decision?”

“Does that seem so weird a notion to you? No, don’t answer that, of course it would. Yes, I actually brought it up with King Stannis. First he told me I had to go back, then he shared his plans about you and since they were sensible and he said he didn’t think that it was a good idea if you stayed back at Winterfell, I figured that if you came with it would just be better for everyone involved.”

“I fail to see how.”

“Lad, if you had stayed at Winterfell I doubt you’d have lasted more than two months. Regardless of what you really did or didn’t a couple of years ago. Your sister wasn’t an option and she didn’t seem to think that you’d be much better off in Pyke. Any northern lord would have probably killed you regardless of whatever your sister did. And I don’t see any of my peers from the Stormlands giving you some peace of mind. What you are failing to see is that if you’re coming with me no one is going to be a bother since I do have some authority, no one where I live has a clue of who you are and you’d probably get some peace of mind. And I know that even if I’m not there, my wife isn’t ever going to let you sleep on the floor if you think about doing it, so there’s that.”

Theon swallows and looks at the ground, his shoulders shaking ever so slightly. “I fail to see how it’s better for you out of everyone involved.”

Davos can read the real question underneath well enough – _what in the seven hells told you that getting saddled with me was a good idea_. Especially because he’s become familiar with it, but it’s not like he can answer truthfully. That would be the worst mistake he could make, for now.

“I spent more than ten years hearing people laughing behind my back because the only reason I didn’t live in Flea Bottom anymore was smuggling onions. In comparison, this entire business is drinking fresh water.”

Right, so it wasn’t the whole truth but it’s not exactly a lie either – being looked at as if you’re too good to be real surely beats the way his former and current peers used to look at him before they couldn’t afford it anymore.

Theon looks as if he’s about to say something, but then closes his mouth and shakes his head. All right then. He’s not going to push for an answer.

“Very well then,” Theon croaks a moment later, and then he stands up and heads straight for his cabin, his shoulders trembling ever so slightly.

He doesn’t come out of it for dinner, but Davos doesn’t go looking for him – he did eat during lunch and he probably has things to think through, so he goes to sleep instead and hopes that he didn’t make a colossal mistake when he decided to speak his mind. He’s moderately comforted if he thinks that speaking his mind never worked too badly for him all things considered – he just hopes it doesn’t fail him just now.

\--

The next morning he wakes up at some ungodly hour just before dawn, but when he can’t go back to sleep after turning on his side a couple of times he gives up on it. Not that breakfast would be ready yet, but no sense in staying in when he can breathe some fresh air and look at the sea without the day’s background noise. He gets out of his cabin after putting on some heavier clothes – it’s chilly in the morning – and then he sees that he’s not alone. Theon is standing over the rails, looking down wistfully, his hands clenched around the wood in front of him.

Davos walks over there without bothering to be quiet about it – better that he makes some noise, probably.

“Isn’t it a bit early to die of cold out of here?” He asks when no one starts a conversation.

“It’s two of us, isn’t it? I mean, I’m –”

“Don’t. I just couldn’t sleep. Was that the same for you or you just wanted to see the sunrise?”

Theon shakes his head without looking at him. “I couldn’t sleep either. I figured the sunrise wouldn’t make it worse.” He’s still looking down at the dark water underneath them as if he doesn’t know if he likes the sight or not. “And – about what we were discussing yesterday.”

“What about that?”

“If you think that I don’t want to take your word, it’s not really that. It’s just that it seems too good of a prospect. If I’m explaining myself.”

That’d be nothing Davos hadn’t imagined, and there’s really nothing he can do about it except proving it with facts, but it’s not like he can give any more facts until they get back to Cape Wrath.

“No offense taken. I think I get it. I guess you’ll just have to see then.”

Theon says nothing for a moment and then glances at his hands on the rails. Right. He didn’t put on any gloves before leaving the cabin – maybe he should have, especially since Theon is staring at his maimed hand.

“If there’s something you want to ask, you can,” he says after minutes of staring. The sky went from violet to deep pink meanwhile.

“I – I hadn’t realized that – I mean, how did that – the hand – happen?”

“It was the price I paid for my knighthood. King Stannis thought that it was fit to grant me one after the siege of Storm’s End, but I was still a criminal. He figured that if I accepted this, it would even things out.”

“You – you had it done voluntarily?”

Theon is saying it as if it’s a completely foreign notion, but of course he would.

“He asked first. I thought it was a fair bargain, all things considered. It wasn’t going to hinder me seriously, I couldn’t argue that I hadn’t been a criminal until that point and in comparison to what I had in exchange it really seemed little. Also – well, I wanted to see better what kind of person I was putting myself in service of. I told him I’d agree if he cut those fingers himself. I was figuring that if he’d just give the order without going through with it, I’d have done it a lot less happily.”

“Did he do it?”

“Have you met him? Of course he did.” He knows he sounds almost fond, which is probably not the appropriate tone for this conversation, but he kind of can’t help it. “In exchange I had a knighthood, a nice place to live and enough income not to starve. I wanted my children to have it better than myself and other than that they also had an education, which all their friends back in Flea Bottom could never dream of. It wasn’t really a big price. That said, it’s not like I was forced to.”

Theon looks back down at his own hands again. “May I ask something personal?” He sounds as if he’s forcing his words out with some kind of monumental effort.

“Of course.”

“Does one ever get used to it? Missing them, I mean.” Theon is resolutely not looking at him, of course, but Davos wasn’t expecting him to. Even if he was expecting the question.

“It was strange for the first few months,” he admits, figuring that there’s no harm in answering truthfully. “I did at some point. I’m not so sure that the different circumstances might change it, but it’s not that bad if you have time to get adjusted. Which I suppose isn’t your case.”

“You suppose right. Thank you.” Theon doesn’t add anything else – by now the sun is creeping over the horizon line, but he’s still looking down at the sea below them.

“You said you were out to see the sunset, but if you keep on staring down below you might miss it, you know.”

Theon’s head jerks upwards the moment Davos asks, and in the faint morning light Davos thinks that he can see his cheeks flushing ever so slightly. Well, doesn’t look unhealthy, at least.

“I’m – I’m sorry, I was just…”

“Thinking about something I guess. You do know you don’t have to apologize for that?”

“I should just stop. It’s things better left alone.”

“Seems like they’re troubling, though.” He doesn’t know why he’s pushing so hard now, but it seems like they’re having a conversation that isn’t completely making him fish for words for once, so he figures there’s no harm in trying.

“Just the last time I’ve been on a ship, I guess.” Theon doesn’t say anything else for a while and Davos is tempted to tell him to just let it go. “I used to like it.”

“Now you don’t?”

“Now I’m counting the days until we get off it,” Theon admits. “I have no business on ships.”

Davos should really leave that question alone.

Then again, he should know himself better than to think that he’d take the easy way out.

“You know, you don’t have to be raiding places or fighting a war to be on ships. Regardless of what your lot thinks.”

“I don’t really think it’s my lot anymore.”

“And that’s why you’d have no business on ships? Humor me a moment, have you ever actually been on a ship just for the sake of it?”

“… What?”

“I used to do that all the time. Taking a small boat and go out to sea if the weather was fine and I had nothing of import to attend to.”

“Oh. No, then. I don’t think I ever was.”

Davos bites down on his tongue so that doesn’t say _I used to bring my sons with all the time_. Not one of them hadn’t liked it. And they’re almost all dead, and he never had time to do it with his last two. Though he supposes that he could now, small favors.

Then he’s spoken before he has thought about the ramifications of it.

“Right. Would you actually want to do it?”

“… _What_?”

“If you want to, I don’t see why you couldn’t come with once. Maybe just try and put on some more weight first, but no one said that you can’t leave the place, you know. And you don’t have to say anything now. Just think about it.”

Theon visibly swallows and then turns on his side, glancing at him before grabbing a couple of gloves out of a pocket in his cloak. “Actually – actually not. I mean. I don’t – need time to think about it. I’d like to. If it wouldn’t bother you too much. My lord.”

“I asked first, didn’t I?”

“Oh. All right then.” He wraps himself tighter in his cloak, visibly shivering, and looks back at the sun, which is well over the horizon line by now. Davos sighs and goes to his own cabin, grabs one of the extra blankets the captain left for him in a cupboard and brings it outside. Theon turns towards him when he hears him coming and Davos doesn’t even try asking – he just throws the folded blanket at him. Theon catches it at once before he can think about it, and then looks down a the bundle in his hands. Then he looks up at him with a stare so lost that it makes Davos’s stomach turn to lead.

“You also don’t have to freeze out here. And I wouldn’t skip breakfast if I were you.”

Theon gives him an entirely dumbfounded nod as he wraps the blanket around his shoulders, the spot of dark pink on his cheeks looking more vivid than it would be if his skin wasn’t so pale. It’s probably the only part of him right now that looks like it would belong on someone his age, and it shouldn’t make him feel as sick as he does.

Davos lets him be and goes to get his own breakfast even if he doesn’t feel like eating at all. At least it’s not that long before they land, and when they do then he’s going to deal with the rest. He has no clue of what he’s even trying to do here, but at least he can console himself thinking that, not counting Robb Stark, he can’t really do any worse than anyone who’s ever come before him, when Theon Greyjoy is concerned.

The thought doesn’t really make him feel any better about it, but it’s going to have to do for now. And even with that, deep down he knows he’s not regretting any of what he’s done until this point. 

TBC


End file.
